Lost and Found by patricia51

(Katniss has lost everyone. Prim, Peeta, Gale, her mother are all gone one way or another. But a surprise survivor appears to try to pull her back from the edge. Set at the end of "Mockingjay" and contains spoilers for that as well as a couple of changes. Femslash. Katniss/Madge romance.)

(Note: Although not exactly a sequel to my Katniss/Madge story "Welcome Home" it does assume that the pair did have the one night romance in that story.)

(Nightmares)

I lay on my bed. The bed I once assured myself was too soft to let me sleep. Now I can barely make myself get out of it. Not that I want to sleep. That only brings nightmares. But are they any worse than the ones I have when I'm awake?

Everyone is gone. I know that I was already teetering on the edge during that last push to the Capitol. The team had been whittled down to the last few and we had been scattered even as we tried to blend in with the refugees flowing towards the center. I was focused, determined to carry out the one thing that was holding me on to any semblance of sanity. I was going to kill President Snow.

Eyes open or eyes closed the same images appear as though they were some kind of show that I can't stop...

Turning the last corner and seeing the huddled masses of Capitol children herded on to the mansion's lawn by the Peacekeepers...

The Capitol marked hovercraft appearing and the rain of silver parachutes...

The explosions among the children, throwing dead and horribly maimed young bodies everywhere...

The rush of the Rebel medics to help and the sight of Prim among them...

My desperate attempt to reach her even as I realized what was about to happen...

Being nearly knocked to the ground as Peeta appears out of nowhere to rush past me, hurling himself frantically towards my sister...

The second wave of explosions and the sight of both Prim and Peeta being hurled through the air to land with sickening lifeless thuds in front of me...

How did he know? How did he get there? We had left him behind in the final rush to the Capitol. But somehow he had found his way there and even before me realized what was about to happen and made that attempt to save her.

So Prim's gone and Peeta's gone. My mother has left for District Four and I know she's never coming back. Who could blame her? There's nothing here but old and sad memories. I'm only here because I have no where left to go. She left me a letter but I can't make myself open it. Too much effort.

Gale is in District Two now. Some new and exciting job. I guess I'm happy for him. He's strong and handsome and brave; he'll have the girls flocking to him. I can't. There will always be that line between us; the possibility that Gale designed or even built the bombs that killed Prim and Peeta. He can't even tell me for sure that he didn't.

The phone rings again but I ignore it. Probably Doctor Aurelius calling for a session. I ignored him at the Capitol and I'm still ignoring him here. I can't think of anything I want to say, anything that might make me feel better. I don't deserve to feel better.

I don't understand why I'm alive. So Coin really did arrange for the bombing; if she set it up so Prim would be in the frontline so she would be killed along with Capitol children and the other Rebel medics in order to whip up the hatred for Snow and his accomplices to a fever pitch, allowing her to assume total control in the Districts' thirst for vengeance. If I had been killed by anything or anyone; a pod, a crazed Peeta, a Peacekeeper. Even a stray round. I know she hoped I would die. I had served my purpose, been the Mockingjay, the face of the rebellion. After that I was nothing more than a threat to her power.

So why didn't I die? If I had, if any of those close calls in combat or even better in training when I KNOW I was being set up had happened would it have changed the ending? The Capitol would still have fallen; Snow would have still paid for his crimes against the people of Panem. Would Coin have still arranged for Prim to be in that first wave of medics? If I had been safely dead would she still be alive? Or would Prim have been sacrificed anyway? The death of the Mockingjay AND the sister she had tried so hard to save would have been great propaganda. Better than the Capitol's film we watched every year.

The sound of the kitchen door opening and closing interrupts my dark thoughts. Greasy Sae has arrived to make me breakfast. I suppose it's breakfast. I think it's morning.

Yes it is morning. I can tell because she makes me eggs and toast. As always, she sits and waits until I've eaten it all. Her granddaughter roams the house. She might as well, I never do. As always she returns with some trinket she has found. Greasy Sae instructs her to return it to wherever she found it. As always I tell her she can keep it. Why not? There's nothing here that I can think of I want to keep.

I spend the day as I spend all of them. I sit and ignore the world around me. I ignore the phone. I ignore the sounds of the people who have returned here. I know they're cleaning up. In one of my rare peeks out of the windows I saw Thom, Gale's old workmate, directing a crew that was going house to house cleaning up and recovering the remains of the people that died in the bombing. That day they were picking through the mayor's house and were carrying bagged bodies out. I guess being the Mayor of District Twelve didn't help that family. I felt another flash of pain. That meant Madge was gone too.

Greasy Sae appeared right on schedule to make supper. This time though when her granddaughter appeared she was holding something that floored me.

"That's, that's my father's jacket," I stammered. "I thought it would have burned up."

"Oh dear, I'm so forgetful," Greasy Sae apologized as she firmly relieved the girl of the jacket and handed it to me. "This and some other items were saved before the fire got to them. They're in the living room."

That explains it. I've not been there since I returned. After Greasy Sae and the girl leave I'm almost tempted to go and see what's there. But that's too much effort. Instead I go back to bed with my father's jacket wrapped around me.

It's dark. Coal dust is everywhere, choking me and blinding me. I know where I am. I'm in the mine. And it's all falling on top of me. I can't find a way out. The walls close on me, burying me forever. I try to scream but the dirt and dust fill my lungs.

"Oh my God Nooooooooo." I wake up screaming, desperately drawing air into my lungs. I can tell someone is with me. A pair of arms encircles me, rocking me gently as a soft voice whispering meaningless sounds of reassurance. I look into the worried, caring face of the person holding me and realize that I must still be having the nightmare. For that person is dead. Isn't she? And before I can stop myself I blurt that out.

"You're dead!"

(To be continued)